Financial IT 2024

The UX differences between fintech companies and banks seem to be melting away, more and more complex products are available on digital channels and everyday electric banking comes with less and less stress. But the digital transformation is far from being over: the replacement of legacy systems, the convergence of digital processes and the genAI boom are bringing new challenges to the sector. Where is banks' digital development headed now? We will discuss this in the session.

Generative AI has burst into the corporate world, the hype cycle may have peaked, but this is where the real work begins: finding, testing and implementing real use cases. What are some successful applications of AI and machine learning in banking thus far, and what will generative AI be good for? The MiCA regulation could also bring blockchain technology to banks, opening up new opportunities for the sector.

In this session, we will focus on front-end developments in financial institutions: What are the areas where banks and insurers have already caught up with fintech and insurtech challengers, and where do challenges remain? How much of an advantage do digital customer solutions and excellent UX provide in the competition among financial institutions today? What client-side innovations and technologies are financial institutions experimenting with, and what trends are emerging in the field? Has the mobile-first trend reached all sectors and customer segments, or will traditional channels such as websites, call centres, salespeople, customer service agents and branches still be needed for a long time to come? How does the DevOps trend relate to this, and what is Platform Engineering all about?

While digital payments, with mobile payments at the forefront, continue to gain momentum among domestic bank customers, the alarmingly rising fraud rates have – hopefully – started to decline. In addition to breaking fraud trends, the sector faces an important challenge this year: from September, new data entry methods and payments with QR codes, NFC and deep links will be introduced under AFR 2.0, which could open the door to new payment innovations. In addition, all banks now accept payment requests, which could lead to a surge in add-on services, and PSD3 is on the horizon. This session will discuss the most important domestic payment trends.

Generative AI is transforming companies as we know them today on a business, technological, and organisational level, and we need to prepare for the changes now. Many processes and work areas currently do not have an off-the-shelf AI solution, but we can expect them to arrive soon; when they do, we must be standing at the starting line. How to tune organisational structures to AI adaptation, how do job roles and the ratio of internal and external IT change? What strategies work, and how can we get on board the speeding AI train?

The digital developments in the highly regulated banking sector are fundamentally influenced by regulatory changes, and the sector will see plenty of these this year. These include the EU's AI ACT, which regulates the use of artificial intelligence, the MNB's fraud recommendation, and the Digital Citizenship Programme, which brings new opportunities and challenges for the banking sector. The new EU network and information security directive, NIS2, is also coming, and another important change will be the establishment of a Central Abuse Monitoring System (KVR) by GIRO to enhance the security of electronic payments.

In this session’s presentation series, you will hear about practical bank AI experiences, artificial intelligence use cases, and organisational issues.